An Effective Assessment Center Program Essential Components

First used in the 1920s, assessment centers were designed to select and promote personnel in occupations ranging from engineers and scientists to secretaries, military personnel, and even spies. More specifically, an assessment center is a process, not a place, which a team [1] uses to identify and evaluate leadership skills for higher level positions, such as supervisors and managers. These centers [2] gained widespread acceptance in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s. Today, various organizations view the assessment center as a widely accepted tool for recommending personnel actions in a variety of occupations, including law enforcement. Regardless of the occupation, common elements exist for an effective assessment center. While an assessment center based program may not incorporate all of the criteria of a true assessment center, certain components exist that all assessment programs should include. By becoming familiar with these components, agency administrators can improve the chances of providing an assessment program that will best benefit their department.

One key principle for a successful assessment center is that all members of the assessment process must work as a team. Properly executed, an assessment program should provide considerable benefits to a department. Not only will the best candidate be selected for the position, but others in the department will benefit as well.

Getting to Know the Department

In making an effective assessment program, the assessors first should become familiar with the targeted department or unit. This preliminary step involves meeting with all individuals involved in the assessment process, including current employees, their supervisors, and any others who work with the incumbents. Additionally, considering the current trend toward community-oriented policing, assessors may meet citizens who could interact with incumbents. In fact, citizens may even serve on the assessment team.

In addition to learning the duties of the employee and their place within the department and the community, members can glean a better understanding of the prevailing social climate of the work environment from this meeting. Because

subtle differences exist between police departments, each assessment team needs specific information to generate a useful program. For example, some police departments emphasize enforcement and SWAT-type activities, while other agencies may be more community-and public relations-oriented. Finally, this first step of the assessment process can generate a departmentwide self-study that can continue far beyond the assessment procedure.

Reviewing and Updating Job Descriptions

The second step in conducting the assessment involves both the assessment team and key department personnel reviewing and updating current job descriptions. This activity should remain a joint venture between the assessment team and the department. Unfortunately, this important step in the assessment process often gets neglected. However, the job description can tell the assessment team as much about the department as it does about the position itself. Reviewing current job descriptions also can help clarify the roles of the individuals who currently hold the positions. The review process enables departments to take a rational and reflective look at how they have operated in the past. If the department and assessment team can forge a high level of cooperation, all will benefit. Managers must not underestimate the importance of updating job descriptions. Departments that operate without updated job descriptions may appear poorly managed, encounter huge legal risks, and lack an effective or defensible employee evaluation program. Agencies easily can rectify this situation and put the department on track for more effective models of police performance by periodically reviewing their position descriptions.

Conducting Job Analysis

After the assessment team completes the initial meetings and job description process, they conduct a job analysis. The job analysis differs from the job description, in that job descriptions usually appear in narrative form, list the kinds of tasks employees perform, and define the job's place within the organization. In contrast, the job analysis, a process that involves current employees as well as supervisors, and in some cases, subordinates and clients, entails a breakdown of the nature, extent, frequency, and importance of specific types of behavior that characterize the job (e.g., ability to negotiate, manage tasks, or handle certain types of situations).

Job analysis stands as the lynchpin of any assessment center program. Through job analysis, team members identify critical and important tasks of the position, develop an understanding of the underlying knowledge, skills, abilities, behaviors, and traits necessary to perform the work, and measure these elements through the assessment process.

After the team completes the assessment program and ranks the candidates, they should make the results of the job analysis available to the entire organization. Updating job descriptions, coaching current employees, improving employee evaluations, and identifying training needs for personal and professional development represent some job analysis functions. A post-assessment meeting with the assessment team to discuss the results of the job analysis can aid department administrators in strategic planning and can serve as a precursor to change for the department. By following this process, the effects of change will have a greater impact and remain more consistent with department objectives and goals.

Meeting with Candidates

Upon completion of the job analysis, assessors should meet with candidates to help them understand the assessment process. At the meeting, assessors should tell candidates what to expect during the assessment process, as well as the rating methods.

The meeting also allows candidates to ask any questions they may have about the procedure. Most candidates have an interest in the assessment procedure, the evaluation process, and the assessors' experience. Candidates have reported that this meeting prepares them for approaching the assessment procedure and that it helps reduce unnecessary tension and stress that most candidates naturally experience when preparing for an assessment center program.

Developing Assessment Activities

After the meeting, the assessors should develop procedures that they will use to evaluate the candidates. Each procedure must have a content and construct valid relationship with the results of the job analysis. Content validity refers to activities culled from the potential types of actual activities that the employees perform or will perform. By comparison, construct validity relates to the underlying skills, knowledge, abilities, behavior, and traits employees need to perform the critical or important aspects of their job.

The job analysis identifies certain characteristics, such as the ability to analyze particular problems or the ability to read, interpret, and apply a department rule or regulation to a practical situation. If these constitute critical or important tasks for the job, then the exercises can measure the skills and abilities related to these tasks. More than one exercise should exist to measure important aptitudes. If the procedure has construct validity, assessors can logically and empirically link the assessment activity and its relationship to the critical aspects of performance identified in the job analysis. An assessment team that cannot relate its procedures to the job analysis risks conducting an invalid assessment center.

Assessment centers can use a number of different types of exercises (e.g., the in-basket activity, the fact-finding exercise, and the group activity [3]) to evaluate the candidates and observe how they would react in certain situations. Because time and resource constraints exist, each program will not use all exercises and will vary among departments.

In addition to using a mix of these exercises, the team should interview each of the candidates. Generally, to facilitate the interview, the candidates first should complete a personal and career attitude questionnaire. This questionnaire can ask the candidates about how they spend their work day, their interests, what problems they believe currently exist in the department, and other relevant questions for the position. Assessors interweave the content-valid material gathered in the interview and on the questionnaire with other behavioral observations made during the assessment activities to provide a comprehensive picture of the candidates.

Psychological Testing

In addition to including law enforcement professionals, assessment teams should include a police psychologist to participate in assessment activities. These activities, such as psychological tests and structured interviews and simulation activities with construct validity, can provide a more dynamic view of the candidate. Not only can assessment teams observe the candidate's visible behavior, but also, through the testing process, they can more thoroughly assess underlying characteristics and traits the candidate may possess. On one hand, it remains vital to understand the candidate from the perspective of a seasoned veteran police officer, yet, it remains equally important to understand the candidate from a psychological perspective, which will often identify personality characteristics that observation and interview do not always reveal. Additionally, a psychological test can validate the observations made during the assessment. If the test findings and the observations agree, then the rating is supported from a different perspective. If disagreements between the results of the test and the behavior of the candidate should occur, then the assessors should reconcile the differences.

Evaluating Performance

In the next step, typically two or three assessors evaluate the candidates. This process should proceed with each assessor compiling a score for each of the candidates, based on their performance on the assessment exercises. After each assessor completes this step, they should meet to discuss their ratings and to achieve a consensus score for each candidate. In those rare cases where assessors experience an impasse, they should average the candidates' scores to achieve a final rating for the characteristic in question. Additionally, assessors can use psychological tests to settle any discrepancies.

Ranking the Candidates

After reaching a consensus on each score, the assessors rank the candidates by converting the values into percentage ratings. By transforming the scores into percentages, the assessors can factor in the relative weight for the assessment center score into the candidates' overall promotional evaluation scores, which may include results from promotional tests and departmental ratings. Assessors must evaluate candidates against clearly defined standards and not against each other.

Compiling the Narrative Report

Because of the considerable amount of information generated from the assessment and to help the appointing authority understand the reasoning behind a particular score, the assessors should develop a narrative report. The narrative report should include the candidates' behavior, their responses on the test, and other appropriate characteristics observed during the assessment. Ideally, the narrative report assists both the appointing authority and the candidates in understanding the reasons for a particular score.

The narrative report should not become a part of any permanent file of the candidates. The assessors should destroy the report following the completion of the promotional process and the expiration of the list.

Debriefing the Candidates

After the team makes the promotion selections, an opportunity should exist for candidates to voluntarily talk to the assessors and receive feedback on their performances and reasons for their scores. This discussion of strengths and weaknesses not only informs candidates why they placed where they did, but allows them to use the feedback to capitalize on their strengths and improve their weaknesses. For those individuals who have an interest, the session proves beneficial for their career development and the department as a whole.

Conclusion

Promotional examinations often are a period of great stress and turmoil in many departments. When a department uses an assessment center approach to promotions, the department administrator should choose the best possible team to gain the highest quality results. Police executives have the opportunity to make the entire process a positive experience for the candidate and the department, as well.

Police administrators and the assessment team, along with others, have an obligation to participate fully in the assessment center program. Various comprehensive models exist of the essential components of an effective assessment center program. In fact, few assessment centers contain all of the components. An informed manager can review the list of components and decide exactly what to include or omit from an assessment center. If a substantial number of components are missing, the administrator should ask the team to modify their approach to improve the process.

Although it has existed for quite a few years, the assessment center has gained popularity as a tool for conducting promotional programs in the public sector only recently. If the assessment team follows certain principles, the assessment center will become not only an effective tool for selecting the best person for the position, but will help the department develop a standard and have a residual effect for all of the candidates who participate in the process.

Endnotes

(1.) An assessment team may consist of a variety of individuals with experience in the law enforcement field, including former and current police personnel.

(2.) An assessment center is a tool for making personnel decisions, including the selection, promotion, transfer, or career development of employees. A team of individuals, including current employees, managers, personnel experts, civilians, and others impacted by the agency, make up the center. The team employs numerous assessment activities to help them recommend a personnel action. The activities help them analyze the type of work and the knowledge, skills, and abilities the employee may have to perform the job.

(3.) Paul Jansen and Ferry deJongh, Assessment Centres: A Practical Guide, (West Sussex England: John Wiley and Sons, 1997).

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